


A Crimson Veil

by KisaraMoriarty777



Category: Original Work
Genre: Blood and Torture, Body Horror, Bugs & Insects, Horror, Implied/Referenced Character Death, Knives, Major Character Injury, Mutilation, Survival Horror
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-05-20
Updated: 2020-05-20
Packaged: 2021-03-02 17:40:48
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,840
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24290707
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/KisaraMoriarty777/pseuds/KisaraMoriarty777
Summary: (This is an original story that I had written for a writing contest. Please let me know in the comments what you think of the story.)In the midst of a snowstorm like nothing anyone had seen in years, Rose was attempting to make her way home before the snow completely covered the roads. She was on her way home when she heard a child calling out to her. Despite her hesitations, she could not leave the child alone in the snowstorm.But her kind heart might just be her undoing.
Comments: 2
Kudos: 1





	A Crimson Veil

The winds blew cold and the air was bitter on this winter’s day. People were rushing back and forth from stores to houses in the midst of the madness that was holiday shopping. Some were rushing from their place of business to their house. The snow was already covering the ground to the point where driving was considerably difficult, however, the sky was merciless and continued to let the large white flurries fall onto the streets below.

Rose Sakuzyo was one of the many people rushing to get home. She lived only a few blocks away from the law office where she was employed, however, the snow and bitter air made it feel like ten times the distance. She was dressed in a long blue gown and her pink fluffy jacket was doing nothing to protect her against the cold. Her office had had a party though, and her best friend, Adrian, had told her to dress in something beautiful for the occasion. After all, Rose had just gotten a promotion from legal administrative assistant to paralegal. It was an event to celebrate. Rose had agreed and had worn the fanciest gown she could find in her closet. She was regretting that choice, however, as she made her way home. She was about a block away from her house when she heard a small voice that sounded much like a child.

“Hello? Is anyone there?” called the voice. Rose stopped dead in her tracks.

“Hello? Is someone out there?” she called back. There was a moment of silence, but then the child-like voice spoke again.

“Please help me. I’m lost. I cannot find my way home,” shouted the child. Rose hesitated. The voice was coming from a dark alleyway that was in the opposite direction of her house. Still though… it was so cold outside. She herself was freezing, and she had a safe place to go to. She could not even imagine a child who sounded so young out alone on the street amid this snowstorm.

“Where are your parents?” she asked.

“Mommy is sick at home. Father went to get medicine. He told me to wait here… but he never returned. Please. Help me,” pleaded the child. Rose bit her lip, gathered all the courage she could muster and made her way into the alleyway.

As soon as she began her trip to find the child, a ball of nervousness formed within her stomach. Something felt off. Something was not right about this. She could not quite place her finger on it though.

 _“You are merely being silly. There is nothing wrong here. You are just paranoid,”_ a voice in her head told her. She supposed that it was correct, and she continued. She spotted a figure hunched over and facing away from her. It was a small figure. Likely the child she had heard. Coming closer, she could see that they could not have been more than seven or eight years of age. She was grateful for the streetlamp in the alley, for she would likely have been unable to see them if it was not there. She knelt to their level.

“Are you alright? I am here to help. Let’s go and we can find you some…” she began, however, her words caught in her throat when the child turned around to reveal a ghastly sight.

All the child’s features were horribly disfigured. The mouth was far too wide for anyone’s face, let alone a child’s face. The pointed teeth stretched to where the jawbone meets the earlobe, and there were strands of rotten flesh within the spaces between the teeth. Their nose was crocked in a way that would have looked broken if it had resembled a nose in any other way. However, that was not the case at all. Rose could see parts of the bone sticking out from the nose, which was cut into half and lazily sown back together with bright green thread. Dried blood covered nearly every part of the nose. The ears themselves were simply missing. They looked as though they had been bitten off, considering the flesh around the spot where they should have been attached to had animalistic bite marks covering it. The skin on the child’s face was slowly peeling off as well. It looked as though someone had taken a fine scalpel and had begun cutting the flesh off in strips. However, they left the flesh hanging there like streamers that had been soaked in water and left there. The tender red of the skin underneath was clear, and Rose could only imagine how painful the bitter air would be on the exposed flesh. None of that compared to the horror of the child’s eyes though. The eyeballs themselves were barely attached to the child’s face. They were drooping out of the socket like a spider dangling from its web. Attached only by the optic nerve. The optic nerve itself was infested with swarms of nightmarish white maggots. They burrowed in and out of the optic nerves, eating away at the decaying hunks of what barely resembled flesh. Rose had to take a moment to force down the rising bile that was mixed with whatever she had had for dinner at the work party.

“Are we going to start a game now?” asked the child in a voice that was all too clearly not human. It echoed around the walls of the alleyway. Rose shook her head frantically. She was frozen in horror. She could not get her legs to work. Her mind screamed at her to run. To flee from this creature. But she was unable to move. Then she felt something sharp against her neck and realized that she was not the one the creature was talking to.

“Yes, we are. And it seems we have a new little toy to play with too,” whispered a low voice from behind her. This one sounded more human than the child-like creature her eyes were glued on, however, there was something sinister about it. It flowed like honey and was pleasant on the ears. Too pleasant. Like a siren song luring in unsuspecting prey. Rose screamed in pain as the sharp object was pressed into her neck. She felt a strange liquid being pressed into the wound created by the sharp object. It burned as it entered her bloodstream and Rose felt her head growing lighter and lighter. She struggled to keep her eyes open, but sleep overcame her.

Rose’s eyes fluttered open and she immediately moved to sit up. A sharp pain filled her arms and legs and she looked down to see that they were strapped to a table with small metal hooks that ripped at her flesh whenever she moved. She gasped in horror when she saw that these tiny hooks were in almost every part of her body, keeping her attached to the freezing slab of marble that served as her bed. She looked around the room to see if there was some sort of escape that she could run to if she managed to get free. The walls of the room were completely bare other than reddish-brown stains that resembled dried blood all too closely. There was not a single piece of furniture in the room. She and the table she was hooked onto were the only things left in the room. It gave the room a barren and isolated feeling that increased her feelings of dread. She heard humming coming from down the hall and held her breath. She shut her eyes tightly and tried her best to pretend she was asleep. She heard the footsteps come up to the side of her head and then there was a chuckle.

“Oh dear. Pretending to sleep, are we? How cliché. Though… I suppose this all is rather cliché. The kidnapping. The “tied to a table and helpless” routine. Forgive me. I do not mean to bore you, but I suppose I am a slave to old habits,” the suave voice from before whispered into her ear. Rose saw no point in trying to keep up her façade and she opened her eyes. She could not hide her confusion when she saw her captor. She had expected him to look like the child-like creature from before. However, this was not the case at all.

This man was all too human. His short blonde hair was gelled back and slicked. Not a strand was out of place. He had piercing blue eyes that were as blue as the sky itself. His blonde eyebrows looked perfect against his pale skin. His skin looked as though it was as smooth as butter, and part of Rose wanted to reach up and touch it to see if that was the case. His lips were perky and had no signs of chapping. He had stunning features, yet there were still signs of aging, especially under those magnificent blue eyes. Bags had appeared under them, and as much care as the man had taken to apply makeup to hide it, Rose could still see them. This, as well as some small wrinkles on his chin and neckline, proved that he was very much human.

“You… you are not a monster…” she whispered. He laughed at this.

“Thank you, my dear, however, I am quite sure you will be singing a different song once we get started here,” he told her.

“Get started? On what? What are you going to do?” Rose asked. She watched as the man left the room, only to come back with a cart that was covered by a black tarp. He lifted the tarp to reveal a large assortment of torture devices. Knives, scalpels, tasers, hooks, whips, and various other things laid neatly on the cart, along with vials filled with different insects. Rose can make out what a few were. She could see some sort of leeches, praying mantises, ants, wasps, and worms that looked unlike any other worms she had seen in her life. A few jars were out of her sight though, so she was unable to make out what was in them.

“I am going to run a few tests on you. A few experiments. Now, before you go thinking I am some sort of mad doctor, I can assure you that is not the case. I am just a normal person with a… eccentric hobby. That is all. A hobby I take a lot of pride in,” he told her.

“Let me go!” Rose snapped. “Someone help me! Get me out of here!” she screamed at the top of her lungs. The man sighed at this.

“No one can hear you. This place is designed to be soundproof. So please stop screaming. Unless you are screaming in pain, I find it to be rather annoying,” he hissed.

“What is wrong with you?! You actually _are_ a monster!” growled Rose as she continued struggling. The man then grabbed her face and his nails dug into the flesh of her face. She stopped moving and her eyes went wide.

“Do you think I want to do this? Do you think that I enjoy what I do? No. I don’t enjoy any of this at all. I do what I have to do for my…” he began, however, he cut himself off. Rose then noticed a small pendent in the man’s pocket. He was close enough to her that she could read what it said.

“Father,” was written in neat print on the pendant. She drew in a shaking breath.

“That thing… that misshapen thing…” she whispered. He noticed that she had seen the pendant and gave a sad chuckle.

“Yes. That… thing as you call him is my son. Well… was my son some time ago. I suppose what I am left with is only the memories within my own mind… and the husk of what used to be my pride and joy. My wife gave birth to our son while she was gravely ill. She was unable to make it to see his second birthday. She had a rare disease that would cause her body to slowly eat away at itself. No one was able to cure her, and we did not know that it… that it could be passed from mother to child. By the time my son was four, he began showing symptoms. They said the only reason his mother had lived so long was because her father… he had begun a practice of using parts of people who had recently died in order to keep his daughter alive. When my son began to show the same symptoms, I knew I would have to do something to save him. But his grandfather worked in a morgue. I… I work in a bank. I had no access to dead bodies…” began the man.

“So… you used live ones,” Rose added for him. He nodded solemnly at this.

“Yes. I did the first trial when my son was four. I… I did not have the surgical expertise my father-in-law had, but I did alright. He was still alive. His body ate at the flesh he was born with, but he was able to live thanks to the donor flesh. I only did the experiments and procedures when I had to. It was always a need for me… but my son… he became addicted to it. He began to take a sick glee in it. The fear in the eyes of the donors. The screams of pain. The cries of anguish. Every time he would make me do worse and worse things. New things that made… make me sick. But he is my little boy. He is my baby boy. I can’t make him upset. He goes through so much pain and agony. I must make him happy. I have to do whatever it takes to make him happy,” explained the man.

Rose was conflicted. On the one hand, she wanted to live. She did not want to meet a painful and likely horrifying end at the hands of this man and the will of his child. She had things she wanted to do. Places she wanted to go. Experiences she wanted to have. Yet… on the other hand… part of her pitied the man. He had lost his wife to this illness, and she could not imagine the pain that had brought him. Then to have to realize your son, at only age four, could die of that same illness. It was a pain no person should have to bear in their lives. And judging by the look on the man’s face, he did not want to do this anymore than she wished for it to be done. Yet here they both were. And in her heart, she knew that there was no stopping what would happen next. He was a man driven by his love for his son. There was nothing stronger, and in this instant, more terrifying, than that. Rose let a few tears fall.

“I can’t promise I won’t scream,” she told him. He let go of her face and smiled sadly at her.

“That is alright. It… I regret to tell you this will be painful,” he replied. She drew in a sharp breath at this but tried to keep her composure.

“Daddy! Are we ready to start our game?” a cheerful voice called from outside the room.

“Yes. Did you clean up a little?” the man called back. The child then came into view and Rose could not hide her shock, for the boy looked like any other normal child. The horrific features from before were nearly gone. She could see the faint outline of stitches, however other than that, he looked perfectly normal. He skipped happily into the room with a folding chair tucked under his arm. He set up the folding chair across from the table she was strapped to and giggled in anticipation. It was the sort of giggle that you would expect from a child at a carnival, not one watching as their father was about to torture someone on their behalf.

“Forgive me,” the man whispered into Rose’s ear. He grabbed a scalpel and cut a small wound into her left arm. Blood began to pour out of the wound, and it dripped onto the floor, making a splashing sound as it did. Rose bit her lip to stop from crying out. She watched in utter horror as he pulled a mutated leech from one of the jars and carefully carried it over to her. Rose screamed in pain as the leech wiggled its way into the hole the man had cut. She screamed as it bit into one of her veins and began drinking up the blood. Its bit felt like acid and she could see the skin rising and falling as it crawled around underneath her skin. The skin moved in waves as it crawled further up her arm. It only stopped once it reached her elbow. There, it attached itself to the bone and happily began drinking the marrow from the bone. Its teeth felt like tiny daggers and Rose continued to scream out until her vocal cords felt as though they would burst.

The man had picked up a piece of thin fabric and he tied it around her right forearm. He tightened it and Rose whimpered softly at this. He gave her a sympathetic look and then injected her with something. Rose’s eyes went even wider as her whole arm began burning. She felt her fingers beginning to go limp and could only watch in horror as they began to go flat as pancakes against the table. The skin was the only thing holding them in the form of fingers, for everything else had gone completely liquified. The process repeated along the rest of her arm up to her forearm. Rose felt her whole arm dissolving from the inside and she felt her head begin to go light as the man grabbed a praying mantis and placed it on her arm. The mantis climbed along the sack of skin and liquified bone, veins, and other tissues until it had found a place it deemed satisfactory. It sunk its teeth into her arm and the arm exploded like a watermelon that was dropped onto the ground. The liquified remains of what once was her right arm splattered everywhere. The child began cheering happily as the mantis feasted on Rose. The leech in her left arm had resumed its feeding as well, seeming to sense the mantis’s feeding frenzy on the other arm. Rose began to fall unconscious, her body unable to handle the pain.

“Fix her! Make her play longer!” growled the child. The man gave a sigh and attached to wires to Rose’s shoulders. He flipped a switch and electricity shot through Rose’s body. The very little amount that was left of her right arm exploded completely, sending red and white chunks across the room. The mantis and leech were killed instantly, and Rose awoke with an ear-piercing scream.

“I think we are only going to be able to do one more thing here. What will it be?” the man asked his son. The boy was silent for a little while before he perked up.

“The worms! In the ears!” the boy chirped.

“Stop. Just stop it,” sobbed Rose as tears rolled down her cheek.

“It will be over soon. I promise,” the man promised her.

“I can’t do this much longer,” she told him. Her head was already beginning to feel light again. The man walked over to the table and pulled out two chunky, slimy-looking, wriggling worms that had razor-sharp teeth. He walked back to Rose and placed them near her ears. Rose shouted out in pain as they quickly made their way into her ear canal. She could hear them inside of her head. They snacked on her skull like someone snacking on a chip. She could hear them crunching away and could feel them as the wriggled and slunk around inside of her head. She felt it as they began to eat away at her brain. It was the worse pain she had ever experienced in her life. She wanted to reach up and tear away at her own head. One worm found its way to her pain receptor and burning pain shot through every single inch of her body. She could practically feel them behind her eyes, which were throbbing and bulging from her sockets. She could hear a squishing sound as the worms made their way around her brain. They fed on what they wished to and merely moved over the other parts they were not interested in.

“Rest now. No more harm shall come to you. Thank you for your sacrifice, and please forgive me for what I have done. I promise I will do something special for you to honor your life. To thank you for not making this harder on me,” whispered the man into her ear. Rose felt herself going unconscious for a second time and knew that this time, there would be no bringing her back. This was the end of the road for her. She heard the man sigh and heard the boy grumbling his complaints. Rose felt the last parts of her soul leaving her body as darkness consumed her.

_The man wandered to the park early in the morning carrying what remained of Rose’s corpse. Her arms and legs were missing. Replaced with lazily crafted wooden versions. She was dressed in a black wedding gown which clung tightly to her thanks to the blood that covered her chest and torso. The man had been careful to remove the worms from her brain, then he sewed up the head and got her ready. He gently set her down on the snow-covered ground of the park. He poured blood around the area where her head laid._

_“You remind me so much of my darling wife. She was beautiful just like you, and just like you, she gave her life for my son. That was her wedding dress. Well, it is close to her dress. I suppose this is the best I can do to thank you. I hope it is enough,” he told Rose’s corpse quietly. He walked away and began to head home. He gave one final glance at the memorial sight he had given Rose. Tears filled his eyes as he looked back. Eyes that were getting weaker with age. He could not make out the details of the dress. Nor could he make out the look of horror on Rose’s frozen face. All he could see from atop the hill leading to his house was a faint outline of a crimson veil that stood out within the snow-covered landscape. And so, the tale ends just as it began. With someone rushing off from one destination to another. With the wind blowing cold, and the air bitter on this winter’s day._


End file.
